Ugh... men.
by radishface
Summary: Anthy's mom (if she ever HAD one) had given her some advice before she 'went away.' Turns out the advice was on men. How does Anthy deal with this? Told from Anthy's POV. Sort of Anthy/Utena towards the end.


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Ugh... Men. 

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Disclaimers: Revolutionary Girl Utena belongs to Be-papas and Chiho Saitoh.

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Warnings and rants: This is a totally OOC piece of work, narrated from Anthy's POV. =_= Whether it's movie-Anthy or series-Anthy, you take your pick. Overall, it really doesn't matter. 

The timeline is really screwed up, I apologize. But most of the narration takes place BEFORE Utena comes along and kicks everybody out. 

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Radishface

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Like all mothers, my own mother gave some pretty good advice, before she left me and my princely brother all alone in that stupid Canadian shack. So it wasn't exactly her fault that another sort of 'prince' in shining armor came to take her to _another _world and she left me and Dios to fend for ourselves. Just dandy. And just before she left, she was telling ME a story-- because my princely brother was taking a well-deserved nap after rescuing forty-two damsels in distress, including the Sleeping Beauty, Aurora, who's just crazy about him. He had to go rescue _her _a staggering twenty-five times today. And she's just so touchy-feely, it's always "OH... Dios! You've SAAAVED me--" or "You're my prince of the STARRRS" or "I want to shine with you forever!" or "love will always keep us together-- " it makes me want to-- no, I'm not jealous. Who's jealous?

So, as my mother once said, "Anthy-hon, if you're gonna PICK a man, you gotta PICK the one that' RIGHT for you! If you wanna get a GOOD guy, then you GO GET a good guy!" 

So she said. So I'm looking for a good guy, and the only GUY around in our dumpy Canadian shack happens to be none other than my own brother. And I guess my mom notices something (either that or SHE was sleeping with him... Lord knows my brother at THAT time was even MORE of a player), because she says, "uh-uh, Anthy, hon, you don't go snooping around your own BROTHER like that, that's called _incest," _and so she's talking to me like I'm some sort of a baby, which I'm _not, _while my happy brother is being fed grapes by Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, who probably don't even notice that his 'throne' is actually just a pile of hay. But I'm not complaining. What's there to complain about?

Okay, so NOW I know what incest is. But I didn't really grasp the concept before, as my mom didn't allow me to date any of Eskimos that used to pass by the river just a little whiles from our front yard, and she didn't even allow me to wave to the men in the red uniforms in their horses. I think they were Canadian policemen, I'm not sure. But it's no big deal. After mom so callously LEFT us, we were stormed by the princes who were demanding the return of their princesses. That included all the Prince Charmings that Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella had ditched to get to my brother. Oh, come on. You didn't _really _think it were the parents whose daughters were waiting to be rescued, did you?

So I _had _to stick up for my brother, and get impaled, and watch him as he turned from the wide-eyed angelic player to a new, more 'grown-up' mode. His voice got hell deeper, he got taller, his hair grew longer, and his schlong got bigger too. Not that it was a surprise. I got boobs, kick-ass wavy hair that could cover my entire body, and Chu-Chu, who I met along the riverbank. He was probably one of those Eskimos with a curse on him or something. Anyway, he became my friend, after mom left and after Dios changed his name to AKIO ("changing times, baby. Gotta sound more mature.") and became a dickhead (not that he wasn't already one in the first place), we decided to get the hell out of the Canadian Shack. We stole a Honda and made our way to the California coastline, where we flagged down a cruiser and my brother played the charming man he could have been and we were on our way to Japan.

So, as my mother said, "you can't have your own brother." Well, I sort of broke that rule after he convinced me to... you know. It was his fault, _all _his fault. I wish mom would have been around to spank him. I hope she comes back to spank him one of these days. 

So 'Akio' (who secretly calls himself "Lucifer, Prince of Darkness and Lord of the Ring" when he thinks nobody's around) takes over the chairman position after infecting him with AIDS (although miraculously, he doesn't get it himself) and then proceeds to screw every single person worth screwing on the school board. Or at least, mind-screwing them. I know for a fact that every single person on the staff and faculty wanted to get into his pants, man or woman. Including that weird counselor lady who wears the funky fifties-cat-eyed glasses. 

My mother told me that in the Rules of Man-Hunting, you NEVER wanted to hook up with a playboy. Well, okay then. There were playboys, and my brother happened to be one of them. But the first screw he passed onto me when I was the Rose Bride just happened to BE a playboy. Fun for me. And what a heartbreaking experience it was, too. The red-haired circus freak wouldn't even let me play Snake on his Nokia cell phone. Or at least, I thought it was Nokia... and was he using Sprint or Cingular? Well, anyways, Chu-Chu wanted to play Snake, too, but noooooo, his OTHER girlfriends had to play Snake and he didn't want to ruin the 927-high score he had received while playing it in bed last week. He said sex helped him concentrate. If you ask me, the guy's a loser. 

So he went around and slept with other girls. No problem, I got over it. As a Rose Bride, you learn to develop the heart of steel and the mind of rubber. So I _had _to do the 'bidding' of my 'engaged.' Who said I wanted to be engaged? So who cared if Akio was the one pulling all the strings while _I _had the power to revolutionize the world without knowing it? I was too infatuated with him at the time. Hey, when you live with one guy in a Canadian Shack for most of your teenage life before moving on to other specimens, you kind of grow attached. Don't blame me. 

So the next rule in the Rules of Man-Hunting my mother explained, was that you would NEVER want to pick a man-chauvinist to be your boyfriend, future husband, whatnot. Since this isn't the early 19th-century and women are free to do as they please, it's good to exploit a little power. It's good to manipulate a bit and have a little fun. Well, being the Rose Bride, I was already sort of a pushover. I didn't really have the chance to 'manipulate' Touga much because he didn't spend enough time around me, as it was. Besides, he was also getting screwed by my brother, who pretty much told the pretty red-head everything that went around, and all his plans to revolutionize the world, blah, blah, blah. But I think Touga was too absorbed with Akio's dick those times to notice what he was talking about. But pretty little Saionji, insecure, babbling, insane-psycho-bitch Saionji... I had to get stuck with HIM next. If you ask me, getting stuck with a playboy was better-- at least he didn't harass me half the time. 

But of course, I'm the Rose Bride, I have to do whatever. 

So Saionji's never had a girlfriend because he likes Touga a leeeeetle too much. (He always mutters something about 'Touga' being his 'best friend' in his sleep... I wonder what that means...) That cute bouncy-bouncy Wakaba girl was always chasing him around, too, I pity her. Then again, "all girls are like the Rose Bride," or so I said, one time. Wakaba's no different-- she'd gladly bend over in any direction for Saionji to step on. I had to do that, _all _the time. He was a bastard to Chu Chu, always dunking him in tea or pulling the bathtub plug when Chu Chu was taking a bath and watching him swirl down the drain (although you would wonder WHY he would go into the bathroom while Chu Chu was in it), and other mean, sadistic things like that. So Saionji doesn't really know how to TREAT a girl... even though I think he genuinely liked me (but I didn't really _give _a crap). That still didn't give him an excuse to slap me around like his bitch (technically, I was... but...). 

He was only so full of himself because he beat Touga in the duel he challenged him to and won me. Touga didn't really care, either. No offense to Saionji, but Touga is definitely more practiced, calm, and collected when he duels. He doesn't get mad-firey-passionate-arrrrgh-I'm-gonna-kill-you like Saionji does. Touga just stood there and let Saionji cut off his rose. And then when he won, Saionji just sort of _looked _at me... ew. I was very afraid that he'd come on to me and ask me if I was wearing any underwear. Well, of course I was. Just because I was the Rose Bride didn't mean I was a slut. You left things like that to people like Shiori, who always walks around with her skirt pulled up to show her lovely expanse of legs. 

Juri appreciates the sight, I'm sure.

But Saionji was a real bitch. I had to clean house every day, do his homework (which I didn't take very seriously... he got a D in calculus that semester), scrub the toilets , make him shaved ice (his favorite was strawberry-flavored with lime-flavored syrup... makes you wonder), cook dinners, dust his bookshelf, take impeccable care when cleaning his kendo set, wash his hakamas because they often got sweaty... and for the first few weeks of our engagement, he'd always call me "WOMAN!" which got on my nerves, a lot. A little snap of his fingers, and his green tea would have to be ready, his underwear folded, his towel warmed, his water bottle refilled, yadda, yadda, yadda. The list went on. But fortunately, he never got the chance to get into my skirts before cute little piano-playing Miki challenged him to a duel. 

I knew all the student council, of course, but never really paid any especial attention to Miki-- the two bickering husbands (so I like to call them), Touga and Saionji, were always too busy arguing about this and that (or rather, Saionji was doing the pissed-off routine and Touga would just take it in stride) while the two other members of the student council looked on. Speaking of which, I always wondered why they called it a 'student council' instead of an 'ASB' like most other schools did. I asked Akio, and he just replied it sounded more professional. If you ask me, I think he's a Communist closet case. He wears that red shirt and has a thing for red-headed boys. 

But Miki was just sort of there, always clicking his stopwatch like he had some anxiety disorder, big doe-shaped blue eyes blinking every now and then and _always _watching me. He had a massive crush on me-- I knew that, of course. The entire middle school knew. Good thing his sister didn't really figure it out at the time, though, because otherwise I probably wouldn't be alive right now. But really, I sort of understood her. We were sisters together in a case of brother complexities. 

Saionji was still full of himself when he appeared on the dueling arena, and after we did the whole pull-the-sword-out-whoopee-what-fun-watch-the-sparkles and "FOR THE REVOLUTION OF THE WORLD!!!" routine, he was just skipping around and making fun of Miki's manliness (because the poor boy was just going through puberty then) and Miki wouldn't (or couldn't) reply because every time he said something, his voice would crack and run up and down like those ascending and descending scales he played on the piano. It must have been pretty sad for Saionji, who was skipping around, chorusing, "the woman's mine, the woman's mine!" when he got his rose chopped off. For a few minutes, it was as if somebody had chopped off his dick, the only proof that _he _had that he was a man. 

Miki was an absolute gentleman, who didn't believe that he had _won, _and while staring at me with his big blue eyes, he'd open doors for me, pull out my chair before I sat down, that sort of thing. It was nice being treated to that, and because of the rules of the Rose Seal, his sister was kicked out of their dorm (and it wasn't very pretty), and I got to move in (fortunately, she wasn't informed of this little detail.)

My mother also said, "Don't marry a guy who's too feminine, either, because he'll probably turn gay on you."

It wasn't long after we were engaged that Miki's sister, Kozue, began to start snooping. She was a bit... surprised... to find all the Estee Lauder makeup products in Miki's bathroom when she stopped by after school to 'see how Miki was doing.' I had heard her coming beforehand so I hid in the closet with Chu Chu, on the topmost shelf, while she rummaged around. I'm guessing she found the Country Apple body soap in the showers, the pink poof-sponge, the avocado oil on the counter, the 'Better Homes and Gardens' magazines stacked up by the toilet, Victoria's Secret lotion (I buy those by the gallon), and the bras hanging from the bathroom door clothes rack. It was getting rather cramped and uncomfortable in the closet when Miki came back, and his eyes bulged out of his head twenty meters ahead of him when he found Kozue waiting for him in the bathroom (she was lounging in the tub with a very 'come-hither' look on her face). 

So, of course, being a normal sort of person, she'd ask what was going on, and then accuse Miki of having another woman at their house, and that she was really _OKAY _with it... which she did. Miki, turning absolutely red in the face, was stammering barely coherent excuses while she was there with a smug cat-smirk on her face, like she'd won the entire argument (even though it wasn't much of an argument). I was about to fall out of the closet and gracefully announce my presence when Miki came up with an excuse that (didn't really) shocked me. 

"Don't you think purple is such a pretty color for an eye shadow?" he said, after taking a deep breath. 

Kozue raised an eyebrow, I remember. "Excuse me, Miki?" 

"I said, purple is _such _a _fabulous _color for an eye shadow-- especially on you!" His eyes brightened considerably and then he reached into my Estee Lauder makeup bag and pulled out the purple eye shadow (which I never use-- you know how horribly it would clash with my hair?) and pulled out the poof-brush thing. 

"Miki..." Kozue's eyebrows were a little more raised, I'm sure.

"It's absolutely _gorgeous,_ hon, you have to try it!" He bounced, and then started applying it on Kozue, much to her surprise. "I mean, the color is just... pshawww... I can't being to _describe..._" 

For the next two hours and fifteen minutes, the twins took turns applying MY makeup and fiddling around with MY perfumes and body sprays... I vowed revenge, and swore I'd get a reimbursement and a $1000 dollar shopping spree the next time I went to Bath and Body Works, from Miki. But then again, it was pretty funny watching Miki turn himself into a flaming fairy while Kozue laughed. It was a heart-warming scene, straight out of the Brady Bunch or something like that, the brother and the sister having good times, and they could have gone on a bit longer, if the doorbell hadn't wrung. 

"Oh, I'm sorry, Miki." Kozue bemoaned, rising up from the vanity stool. "That must be Kevin."

"Kevin?" Miki blinked, through the blue-glittery mascara and ten pounds of green eye shadow. "Oh, you didn't _tell _me... is he... you know... _new?_" 

"He's the exchange student from Britain." Kozue said, her voice bored. "_So _fascinating." 

"I'm _sure._" Miki gushed, standing up as well and walking Kozue downstairs. I cautiously jumped out of the closet, landing on the bed so I didn't make a sound. Chu Chu ballooned down after me, and I peeked out of the room, watching them slide down the stair banisters like two happy kids.

"I didn't know you subscribed to 'Better Home and Gardens,'" Kozue said, as she put on her shoes. The doorbell rang, and she frowned. 

"Well." Miki smiled, the light catching on his chocolate-mocha-strawberry-flavored lip gloss. He _did _have an adorable smile. "We'll have to go through it again sometime, you know, _redecorate _the Sunlit Garden... I have some _fabulous_ ideas in mind... sort of Victorian-Tudor... 14th century like that, you know, with a splash of Scandinavian-contemporary-theme on the gazebo, maybe..."

"Sure." Kozue smiled, and then opened the door. "Why, KEVIN!" She flushed, and jumped in his arms. "I was _waiting _for you!"

"Hey, baby." The English exchange student said. "Is that your sister?" He looked with interest at Miki, who blinked back innocently.

"That's my brother." Kozue said, dismissively, and then linked her arms around his, walking off while waving good-bye to Miki, and he waved back. 

"You never told me he was a poof," Kevin laughed, and they disappeared off into the sunset like a pair of lovers, which they were, for the day. Knowing Kozue, there was probably some Italian exchange student she'd seduce tomorrow.

Miki shut the door, and then leaned back against it, sighing-- with relief or disappointment at Kozue's departure, I didn't know. But I did walk down the stairs, and he gave a little 'eep!' when he saw me, and hurriedly tried to scrub the makeup off his face. 

"You didn't see that, did you?" He asked me quickly, and I smiled. 

"See what?" I replied, and then breezed past him towards the kitchen. "What do you want for dinner?"

"I--I-- well--" he stammered. "Curry."

"Of course, Miki-sama." 

'Miki-sama' sounds strange. It doesn't have the ring to it that 'Touga-sama' or 'Saionji-sama' has. 

Just a random thought.

Well, a few days after that incident, Miki started playing with my makeup and soap products and whatnot more and more often. (I got the gossip from Chu-Chu, who was hiding out in the corner of the shower while Miki was at the vanity counter) Of course, every time I came back from shopping, groceries, or whatever, his face would be washed clean. But I found a few blue hairs in my bobby pins and my razor had blue hairs in it too. The day before he was challenged to a duel, I got him mascara and a razor, which he profoundly thanked me for, without asking me how I knew of his 'secret.' 

So my Estee Lauder bag and my Bath and Body Works products were his 'shining things' for the duration of my visit, even though I pretended to blissfully not notice. Miki developed a lisp of all sorts, and started flopping his wrists about as if they were disjointed from his hands. Poor thing, really. Kozue didn't come back for a few weeks, but that was okay, as he had _me _to keep him company. I made him salads and finger foods, which he started having an affinity for, and things like that.

Well, then, Juri decided to be the next challenger.

Miki was pretty good friends with Juri, and while she poked fun at his fencing technique (which was very mean), he sort of lost his balance (probably due to all that mascara clumped around his eyelashes) and fell over, leaving Juri to turn him over and stab his rose. So I was turned over to a dyke, which was NOT fun.

The good thing was that she didn't use my makeup or any of my other products... unlike Miki (who sort of stopped with the whole flaming-thing after I left, and once Kozue came to live again, she was sorely disappointed that her brother was denying that they had played 'beauty salon' just a couple weeks ago).

Juri's dorm room was a complete MESS, typical of a tomboy or some other ruffian (Miki had kept his rooms impeccably clean), and Playboy and Penthouse magazines were all over the place, pinups of Shiori here and there, pasted all over her walls (can't imagine where she got them), but her bedroom was pretty neat (which probably meant she didn't sleep in it often), which made cleaning THAT room a lot better. Her e-mail (which she made me delete daily, "but leave the best stuff in there...") was filled with SPAM and junk mail from guess-where. Another one of my mom's sayings:

"Anthy, hon, you don't even go for a WOMAN, either. Because they're not MEN. And we're talking about MEN."

Well, I'd already violated that law, just I had everything else.

While Juri lusted over Shiori every night and spoke about miracles and how she was going to use me to get them (and I was okay with that, really), Saionji was preparing to whoop her ass in the next duel. 

She harbored away her dildo collection, her videotapes of Shiori and other unmentionables, a couple photos of Ruka ("I'm _BISEXUAL_!"), and other stuff that she never really had me clean. Come to think of it, Juri never let me touch _anything. _It was always "leave it there, Himemiya, that's the way I like it." So I had to live in that pigsty for a little over a month, while she was hot on Shiori's tail. I'm just VERY glad I wasn't her type... she's the kind of person who either LIKES to dominate a screaming-bitch-in-heat (aka Shiori) or BE dominated BY a leather queen (aka Shiori, again). The stay wouldn't have been so bad if she wasn't slapping me every half second for 'letting that mouse loose' (she meant Chu Chu, of course) in her porno collection. So how could I help the fact that Chu Chu was a monkey and didn't know any better? Didn't humans sort of evolve from primates? Doesn't that mean that Chu Chu was only looking out for the most base of his desires? Why did _I _have to get spanked for it?

Well, it's what friends do for one another.

So Juri's locket was her weak spot. So I didn't really _like _Juri. So... I sort of lost the picture. So she couldn't concentrate during the duel (of course, I gave the picture back and apologized profusely and let myself be smacked a couple times... after the duel). It was (sort of) worth it to be back with Saionji, that male chauvinist, who paid me a decent amount of attention and could be manipulated to do things (such as replenishing my horribly low supply of makeup and body lotions and soaps and shampoos that Miki had used up when I was staying with him) while getting slapped a whole lot for not cleaning the toilet the way he liked it. He learned my name and stopped calling me 'WOMAN' after the first week of our (re) engagement, and Chu-Chu learned not to take baths when Saionji was around. I honestly wonder what went on in the bathroom during our last engagement. 

I found out that Saionji loved unagi (eel), and I cooked it for him every day, but he never liked the smell of the unagi on my hands (TELL me that isn't gay). Well, I didn't either, but anything to keep him away from me, right? So 'essence of unagi and other wonderful seafoods' (he's a sucker for good sashimi) hung around me and for another two months, nobody challenged him. 

I was in danger of smelling like fish for the rest of my life until I had to revolutionize the world, which involves me getting naked and then getting stabbed by a couple billion swords while my devil brother tries and becomes the player he used to be (which probably gets rid of the fishy odor).

Then some pink-haired girl came along.

Well, when she kicked Saionji's ass in the name of defending Wakaba (who had no idea what had happened), and we moved into her dorm room (which was a pothole only because nobody had lived in it for a while)... but she kept it relatively neat after I'd cleaned it up. She was nice to Chu Chu, who liked her back, and she was decent to me, without going through my makeup (she never wore any), and disregarded any '-sama' I attached to her name. She did her own homework, kept relatively good relations with the student council (although her terms with Saionji were more questionable), and made her own dinners, time to time. 

"Anthy, if a man ever comes along, and he's _good _to you... well, you'll know." My mother said. She sort of left it at that. 

And so Utena got me my life back, saved me from the clutches of my brother the devil, and made everybody _else _realize what was wrong with them. So Saionji and Touga became good friends again, Juri's chances with Shiori rose by five percent (more or less, so sue me), and Miki's relationship with Kozue became less catch-you-catch-me-possessiveness-like. Nanami (who NEVER was a victor, thankfully, and thus, never got to own me) got over her own possessiveness over Touga and left the 'bickering husbands' to their kendo matches while making tea with the same cow-faced expression I sometimes wear when I'm told to do whatever.

But I really don't have to do that anymore. 

So my mom said that if the right MAN comes along, I'll know it. Well, Utena just happens to be... a female. As in not male. As in kind of like Juri, but not really, because she's not a butch sort of person. She's not possessive, or chauvinistic, or playboy-ish, or ultra flaming-gay. And after I quit Ohtori Academy (hell, I've already learned all of life's lessons anyway, being the Rose Bride), I wandered around for a while, settled down and rented an apartment (hacking the money out of my brother's account), and started taking mechanics classes at the local community college. It's something that the 'men' back at the academy would never let me do (and something so VERY anti-feminine)... and I enjoyed it, I guess. Grease and motor oil found their way into my hair, but I took care of that by using Herbal Essences Shampoo. Anyway, one day at lunch, while I was eating my unagi sushi with Chu Chu, there she was, sitting at the table four rows down from me.

So Utena was there, and she had just _happened_ to be taking art classes in room 349 on the second floor. 

The community college isn't as beautiful as Ohtori was, it doesn't boast the wonderful architecture and 17th-century Palace of Versailles look, and it certainly doesn't have goofy uniforms like Ohtori did-- I don't see bright teal as often as I did in Ohtori. Instead of her uniform (which she still has), Utena wears a large yellow sweater and jeans. Being the tomboy that she always was (and will be), her sweater has a bunch of paint splotches here and there, and _I'm _always the one who has to wash them out. But she cooks, so it's an even exchange. 

Oh, did I mention, we became roommates? It was exactly like the old days, and I really couldn't have been any happier. 

"If a man ever comes along, and he's _good _to you... well, you'll know." 

My mother was a bit narrow-minded, wasn't she? 

In retrospect, the days back at Ohtori weren't that bad. They're not as great as they are now, though. The guys here don't have as extreme personalities as Touga, Saionji, Miki, and Akio did, but it doesn't matter, because there's no point in looking.

That _good _person is here, and I _know _it, and so what if _she_ happens to be Utena?

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